A Chink in his Armor
by emmiemac
Summary: A chance encounter with a very different kind of young girl shows the beginning of cracks in the Hound's armor of indifference. The world is awful and there is no place to hide from it so best learn while you're young. One shot. Pre-Blackwater drabble with no spoilers and less significance. Profanity and mention of underage prostitution.


_DISCLAIMER: This story is entirely based on character[s] from George R.R. Martin's _A Song of Ice and Fire

**A CHINK IN HIS ARMOR**

_**chink in one's armour**: 1.) A fissure or flaw in a piece of armour that compromises its defensive abilities. 2.) a small but fatal weakness_

Sandor Cleagane sat impatiently astride Stranger, waiting for the street to clear. A stinking heard of swine had escaped a pen near Flea Bottom and an equally stinking heard of men were running about trying to catch them, as were many commons and even small children, hoping for a free side of bacon and salt pork to see them through the coming months. War in the Riverlands had meant less produce and livestock in the capital, and people were beginning to hoard and scrounge amid growing shortages. To Sandor's satisfaction, the smallfolk blamed the Imp.

He scowled dangerously from atop his mount. Usually the peasants parted for him from fear, turning their faces away and cowering in doorways like the miserable cravens they were, but today the specter of hunger was stronger than their caution. Finally he put his heels to Strangers flanks and the dark horse broke through the crowd a ways, causing men and boys to scatter and pigs to squeal.

"Clear a bloody path," he shouted over the din. "I'm about the King's business."

He didn't need to tell them that: everyone in King's Landing knew the Hound was the King's Sworn Shield and now Kingsguard as well. He had not donned the white cloak today, since he was in fact about his own business with the armorer in the Street of Steel. Stannis Baratheon was due to attack King's Landing within a fortnight if not sooner, perhaps within days, and Sandor wanted his own armor ready for battle. The Kingsguard armor might be impressive in the eyes of some but he wanted his trusted already battle-worn armor and helm when it was time to fight. He had been promised it would be ready on the morrow he had thought that a stop at a lowly winesink would not be noticed much without the damn white cloak and now here he was stuck in a crowd bellowing about the King. Fuck, enough.

Sandor cut into an alley and ducked under washing strung across low windowsills between sagging, rickety buildings. The stench was powerful even without the sun beating down in the dark, damp alley so he was glad to emerge eventually onto a cleaner, calmer street as he cut his way across the city towards the outer wall to circumvent the clamor that suddenly oppressed him.

The walls of King's Landing and even the Red Keep had become a prison of late, and his thoughts wandered for the first time in many years to the hills and valleys around his father's keep in the Westerlands. He sometimes longed for the fresh air and rolling green landscape and quieter village but aside from the pastoral setting, those memories of his youth were overwhelmingly dark and oppressive too and so he felt angry. Or perhaps angrier. There had been a selfishly mean and heartless youth running that keep as well though his brother's cruel savagery far outstripped the young king's callow and petulant nastiness. Still, Sandor thought he had escaped all that.

Further up the street he turned into another alley, with the backs of homes and shops on one side and a dense overgrown garden surrounded by a fence on the other. He slowed his mount to a walk and squinted up at the sun, wondering about the hour when a bright shape plummeted out of the sky in front of his horse, making Stranger whinny and startle so that Sandor had to steady him with the reins and his thighs in the saddle.

"Easy, boy," he soothed him, and looked to see what had befallen them.

"Seven hells," he muttered now: seeing the bright blue object in the dry dirt of the alleyway. He dismounted and patted his horse's neck. He took several steps before he heard the noise.

He stopped and watched curiously as the brush behind the fence shivered and rustled as though an animal were crawling through it, He almost expected a cat or stray dog to emerge. Instead he heard voices.

"Can you see it?" One whispered hoarsely.

"Not…not yet. Wait!" Another exclaimed.

"Shhh, you two: just leave it and come back," yet another spoke, sounding panicked. "We'll be in trouble…"

"But I can see it now," the second, braver voice exulted quietly.

Sandor observed a hand reach out tentatively under the brush and carefully, quietly took several steps closer. He could see the hand was small and white, and that the arm stretching out was thin beneath the drab-coloured but quality linen sleeve. The brush rustled more and the little arm strained to reach the bright object.

"Can you reach? You'll get dirty," the panicky voice whined.

"Maybe…but I can't see like this." More giggling followed.

The little white hand reached and patted the earth, tremulously seeking its prize. Smirking to himself, Sandor reached easily to pick it up and was fleetingly tempted to step on the little hand when it found his boot instead.

"Oh!" A startled cry.

The brush parted and two blue eyes looked out at him from between the rough boards of the fence. They blinked, wary and uncertain, and then the brush parted slightly to reveal a young face to him.

"Forgive me, Ser."

"I'm not a _knight_," he snapped his habitual reply.

"I'm sorry; how shall I address you then?" Polite, proper, gentle. It rankled him.

"Who told you to address me, girl?"

"I wished to apologize. I was only looking for our kite," she told him sweetly.

"Your kite startled my horse," he sneered, "Mayhaps I'll let him trample it."

The girl blinked again and dropped her eyes penitently. "If it please you, S- my lord. We are sorry to have startled your horse."

He was about to toss the thing into the alley out of her reach, to teach her not to call him a lord, when he heard another of the voices.

"What's happening? Who are you talking to?" a voice asked urgently. "Do you have our kite? Oh!"

"We startled his horse. He's angry at us," Blue Eyes whispered to her friend who was now peeping out at him, looking even more startled.

"He looks angry," the other said fretfully; "He's very big too. Will he tell on us?"

"We are very sorry," Blue Eyes repeated.

Sandor looked at the garden and building now, narrowing his eyes. "What is this place? Are you sisters?" he questioned harshly.

The girls burst into giggles now and it dawned on him where he was.

"This is Baelish's brothel," he sneered. "You're his whores."

The girl stopped laughing and dropped her eyes again, blinking, "Not quite, my lord...," she spoke softly.

"I'm not a lord either," he spat.

She looked up again. "I'm not a whore." Firmly spoken, followed by a reluctant admission: "…not as yet."

"Still learning, then," he scoffed insultingly. But the girl held his gaze and nodded slowly. "And what do they teach you?" he asked he leadingly. He was curious; and he wanted to embarrass the little wretch.

She gasped a little laugh and whispered hoarsely: "Why, to please men of course." She left her mouth open and he could see her red tongue and little white teeth.

"And how would you do that, girl?" He waited for her answer; she was growing bolder instead of embarrassed.

"We do what they ask…unless they are shy; I'll bet you're not shy," she teased him.

He looked at her shrewdly now: the frank blue eyes and white skin, tinged with pink, and the full mouth; plump even, and dark pink lips. His eyes lingered there a fraction of a moment but it was long enough for her to proffer a sly smile. It was unsettling in so young a face, but intriguing as well. He felt his mouth twitch.

"What's your name then, little whore-to-be?" he rasped.

She glanced down coyly and back up at him again.

"I guess it will be alright to tell you, since I will have to change it: it's Gwynnesse." She drew out the 'esse' caressingly and smiled her little, closed-lipped smile again.

"And why…" The girl vanished when she let the shrub close over her face, but then she appeared again: her eyes looking out over the top of the fence. "Why should you have to change it?" He asked her now, stepping closer to the fence.

She placed her foot on the lowest board in the fence and slowly lifted herself up so that he could see her clearly. She leaned into the highest board so that the tops of her breasts pushed up towards the neck of her dress.

"They say it's too formal: that it sounds like a septa," she answered guilelessly, biting her lip.

"Some might like that," he snorted and examined her more closely. Small chin, round cheeks, little nose and those clear, steady blue eyes; blue like…

But no, these eyes weren't frightened, or shadowed by grief and hurt. These eyes were frank, with even a glimmer of playfulness. She was playing with him, the minx: too much learning and no real practice, he concluded: she was bound to be curious, eager even. He was beginning to feel like playing too; he did not often have a pretty girl looking him straight in the eye and engaging him, in fact most whores would rather not speak with him at all but be done with him as quickly as he would be done with them. He thought he could lure her into the alley to have her for his own quick satisfaction, or climb over the fence and under her skirts and have her squealing in the tall grass until he peaked with sweat running into his eyes. He felt a powerful surge of blood as he imagined the sweet, hot tightness around his cock. Mayhaps he could even walk around through the front door, take a room, a bed and his bloody time. She might be worth a handful of stars or maybe dragons, or however much a new-hatched whore would cost. There was plenty of his tourney-won coin left in his purse after the armorer.

He hesitated though, and not just because his money would go to Baelish; she was very young but not innocent, at least not as innocent as…some. She was no maiden in a tower, no lord's sheltered get. This girl would soon know the way of the world, and of men. Many hands would be on her, stripping her, using and bruising her, even hurting her: they could do that, if they paid enough. His imaginings stirred and sickened him at the same time. The similarities were too, well, similar; they should not be. There should be a much greater difference between a high-born girl at court and a young whore in a brothel. Discomfited, he pushed his thoughts away and looked her over again, letting his eyes wander up from her firm, young teats to her rounded, narrow shoulders to her pale throat and again at the pink lips.

His eyes narrowed as he finally noticed her hair which was tightly pulled back in a long braid: light brown and, to his eyes, dull.

"Change your hair too," he told her, harshly, unexpectedly. "Red would suit you better."

Her eyes widened slightly at his comment; then she blinked, struck by his criticism. Then she smiled coyly again.

"If I change my hair…then will you come see me?" she asked softly, invitingly.

His hands griped the kite tightly. Brazen little wench, and she did not seem at all frightened of him. He thought of his hands in red hair, his mouth on the white throat, the steady smile and un-frightened eyes looking up at him from a soft, white pillow, the sweet face flushed and eager. But he was used to fear from others: it was his armor and he was not about to relinquish it for an expensive whore who likely would not keep her soft little mouth shut. Mayhaps she didn't know better, after all, not yet. Well, he could squash her remaining innocence and wipe the playful smile right off her face with a good look at his face; that and a hard, rough fuck. Then she would be frightened of him.

"Do you know who I am, girl?" he challenged her.

Her smile brightened and she nodded. "You're the Hound," she replied. "I have seen you pass by on your big, dark horse, wearing your helm. I thought you looked very fierce and even dangerous. It was the other girls told me who you are when I asked. Lord Baelish didn't like my asking though; he said you don't visit here, and that we're not meant for soldiers and sellswords-"

"And you want what you can't have," he told her sneeringly, his curious arousal dissipated. She only wanted to fuck him to fuck Baelish. He would have thought it amusing once, and not cared how she thought of him if he could have what he wanted.

She looked stung this time; no one thought to prepare her to be rejected. She dropped her eyes modestly this time. Finally she smiled meekly.

"Mayhaps everyone does, a little…want what they can't have, I mean," she ventured softly. "Else there would be no need for us, would there?"

He looked down at the kite now, no longer feeling provoked. He wanted what he could not have alright, but this girl did not have what he wanted. Why was he playing this game? Probably because she was letting him; but he didn't feel like playing with her or frightening her anymore. He held the kite out to her.

"You like to fly kites; are you hoping to fly away?" He made a last attempt at levity, or perhaps advice. _Fly away, little bird, before you are a hollowed-out shadow of yourself, saying and doing what you must to survive. _He thought back to the coins in his purse, and wondered if the same handful of dragons he would have paid for her maidenhead would get her a place in a motherhouse and out of here before it was too late. Would they even take her after she had trained in a brothel? She would have to learn to keep her mouth shut, to be obedient, demure and silent. Else they would likely beat her too.

_Fuck it_. Little girls did not heed his advice, even when _he_ threatened to beat sense into them. They smiled and chirped and waited for someone else to rescue or protect them, some dashing knight; not a burned dog. He could not even protect one. Fuck it, he was going soft: trying to rescue girls from the harshness of real life when what they needed was to learn just how harsh it could be, as he had. He was no ser, no knight to protect the innocent: they needed to learn to survive…or get out of the way of those who could. That's what he had always believed and still did. So let her learn how the world worked, only not from him.

She reached for the kite and took it gently from him before looking up and directly at him again.

"Where would I fly away? The Red Keep? Do you know someone who would want me there?" She bit her lip as though she regretted her words, which had been bitter; and then she remembered her training, or at least her manners. "Thank you for our kite, S-" she stopped herself. She glanced towards his waiting horse and then looked up and over him again, almost wistfully. "If you should change your mind, ask for the girl with the kite; I don't know what I'll be called or what I will look like. But I will remember _you_."

With that, she disappeared behind the brush and shrubs and he heard rustling until the only sound left was Stranger's soft wicker.

"Aye," he said absently, though whether he was responding to the girl or the horse he could not have said if he were asked, Then he turned back to Stranger and mounted up, shaking his head. At least he would not have to guard the King tonight. Then he would at least not to have to see the little bird; he had already had to deal with a girl he could not decide if he wanted to fuck or protect, or both. What in seven hells was wrong with him?

Buggering hells, he would need to get drunk tonight.

He put his heels to Stranger, and rode away.


End file.
